English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century Part 16

This alteration in the man's style after he took to book ill.u.s.tration is known only to those familiar with his early caricatures. If you take, for instance, the etching of _St. Swithin's Chapel_, of the "Sketch Book," or _The Gin Shop_ in the "Sc.r.a.ps and Sketches"[85] (we are speaking of course of the early _coloured_ impressions), and show them together with any two of the caricatures we have named to a person who had never before seen either, we will venture to say that he would p.r.o.nounce them without hesitation to be executed by entirely different hands.

GEORGE'S IDEAS OF FEMALE BEAUTY.

After Lockhart's statement that George Cruikshank was capable of designing an _Annunciation_, a _Beatification_, or an _Apotheosis_, we must accept his a.s.sertion that he "understood the [human] figure completely" with a certain amount of reservation. Perhaps he did; and if he did, he certainly played some extraordinary tricks with the "figure"

aforesaid. The truth is, that we forget the artist's weaknesses, many and glaring as they are, in the l.u.s.tre of his unexampled _genius_. _The Times_, in an otherwise laudatory article which it published after his death, remarked that "there was not a single beautiful face or figure probably in the whole range of Cruikshank's work." Now, although this is not entirely true, there is at least so much of truth in it that we may admit that the cases in which he has produced a pretty face or figure are very few and far between, and even those cases seem rather to have been the result of accident than of design. There is no getting over the fact that George's ideas of female beauty were, to say the least of them, peculiar: his women are fearfully and wonderfully made; they are horse-faced; their eyebrows are black and strongly marked; their hair is plastered to the sides of their faces, and meet bobs of hair at the back of their heads; their waists are as thin as their necks; and they all bear a strong family likeness to one another. _The Times_ a.s.sertion is happily, however, so broad that it is easy to traverse and contradict it. George's handsome women are so few, that it is difficult at the moment to say where any of them may be found. I know at least of one amazingly handsome one--the _London Barrow Woman_ in Hone's "Every-Day Book." Some pretty servant girls will be found in the etching of _The Sergeant Introducing his Dutch Wife to his Friends_ in "St. James's, or the Court of Queen Anne," and I will undertake to point out at least half a dozen pretty faces in the course of ill.u.s.trations to "The Miser's Daughter"; but after all, these are only exceptions to the general rule; and it may be safely conceded that as a delineator of female beauty, George could not hold a candle to John Leech, to John Tenniel, or even to his own brother, Isaac Robert.

THE CRUIKSHANKIAN STEED.

As for the celebrated Cruikshankian steed, I give him up at once as an utterly irreclaimable and unmanageable brute. Thackeray, writing in 1840, said, that "though our artist does not draw horses very scientifically, to use the phrase of the _atelier_; he feels them very keenly, and his queer animals, after one is used to them, answer quite as well as better." Even on this subject, however, the ablest critics have contradicted each other. George Augustus Sala tells us that the artist "could draw the ordinary nag of real life well enough," and cites by way of example the very horses of the celebrated _Deaf Postilion_, in "Three Courses and a Dessert," which Thackeray had previously held up to well-merited execration. He goes on to tell us that when George "essayed to portray a charger or a hunter, or a lady's hack, or even a pair of carriage horses, the result was the most grotesque of failures. The n.o.ble animal has, I apprehend, forty-four 'points,' technically speaking, and from the muzzle to the spavin-place, from the crest to the withers, from the root of the dock to the fetlock, George was wrong in them all. His fiery steed bore an equal resemblance to a Suffolk punch with the head of a griffin and the legs of an antelope, and that traditionary c.o.c.khorse on which the lady was supposed to ride to Banbury Cross with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes."[86] His peculiarities notwithstanding, George himself was in no wise conscious of them, and never hesitated to introduce "the fiery untamed" into any scene--battle or otherwise--in which the services of the eccentric animal might be turned to account. We find him a.s.sisting Was.h.i.+ngton in his triumphal journey to the capitol; astonis.h.i.+ng the French squares in the character of a Mameluke charger at the Battle of the Pyramids; and leaping into the lake along with "Herne the Hunter," that peculiar creation of the late Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, on which supernatural occasion he comes out, as might have been expected, with peculiar force and vigour.

Thackeray, moreover, says of his trees, that they were decidedly original, "being decidedly of his own make and composition, not imitated from any master;" another and a minor difficulty with the artist was a boot, which he invariably drew half a foot too long. George lived in the days of straps, and being strictly conservative in principle, when he met with a pair of trousers, his idea of the "fitness of things" was not satisfied until he pinned them to the wearer's feet with a pair of these most uncomfortable appendages.

Against these shortcomings, which are a sufficient answer to those who would give him credit for possessing the faculty of designing "Annunciations, Beatifications, Apotheoses," and the like, we must set his excellencies, the power and brilliancy of his imaginative faculties, his extraordinary talents of conception and realization, the delicacy of his manipulation and execution: in a word, the strong original "genius"

with which Lockhart credited him from the moment he had seen his "Points of Humour." Examples of this "genius" might be cited by the thousand.

Look only at the famous "Sketch Book;" its recent republication has placed it within the reach of every one of our readers. Look at the _Sprig of Shelalegh_, the rollicking, whiskey drinking, fighting, devil-may-care _expression_ he has thrown into that _piece of wood_; turn to the sheet wherein he has recorded his _Recollections of the Court of Common Pleas_, and study the group of lawyers' and witnesses'

faces therein contained. There is "genius" for you, if you will. If you are overworked, turn to them; they will do you good, for they will not only make you merry, but force upon you the conviction that the conception which created them was essentially original. It is this delightful originality of George Cruikshank which const.i.tutes his _genius_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. "_Three Courses and a Dessert._"

THE DEAF POSTILION.

(_See p. 169._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. "_Three Courses and a Dessert._"

THE BRAINTREES.

"I doan't want to hurt thee, zo I leaves thee wi' un, but, mind--he'll hold thy droat a little tighter than I did, if thee wags a hair."

_Face p. 171._]

"No plan!" "no ambition!" "not much industry!" so at least said Lockhart. We may doubt whether even at the time it was spoken this charge had any foundation of truth to rest upon; an answer to it at least will be found in the fact that, before the mysterious spell had fallen upon him we shall presently have to describe, this sterling and indefatigable genius had already produced thousands upon thousands of miraculous little drawings. From the ma.s.s of these wonderful creations we propose now to select a few examples, choosing them in the first instance from a graver type than some we shall presently have to consider.

"Greenwich Hospital" gives us one of the very best drawings which Cruikshank ever designed. The scene of the _Point of Honour_ is laid on board the _Triumph_, at Spithead, at the time of the famous mutiny. A detachment of marines with shouldered arms are drawn up on the quarter deck, their drummer is beating to quarters, while all hands are a.s.sembled to witness a degrading and demoralizing spectacle,--a sailor, with his shoulders bare and his hands tied to the triangles, about to receive punishment for disobedience to orders. Conspicuous amongst the figures are two little middies, habited in the strange naval uniform of sixty years ago. The ill.u.s.tration to _The Braintrees_, at page 90 of the "Three Courses and a Dessert" is a marvellous specimen, not only of the graphic power of the artist, but a triumph of the wood-engraver's craft. In _The Gin Shop_ ("Sketches by Boz"), the artist selected a subject which invariably enlisted his sympathy and called into action the full power of his graphic satire. Mark the flaming gas, the huge spirit vats, the gaudily painted pillars and mouldings; above all, the strange people: the young man with his hat on one side who chaffs the young ladies behind the bar, the gin-drinking female by his side, the gin-loving cripple, the small boy who brings the family bottle to be filled with gin, whose head barely reaches the counter, the gin-drinking charwoman to the left, and the quarrelsome gin-drinking Irish customers at the back. Everything in this picture reeks of _gin_; the only persons not imbibing it are the proprietor and his dowdy barmaids, whom I have no manner of doubt the artist intended to look captivating.

"What a fine touching picture of melancholy desolation," remarks Thackeray, "is that of 'Sikes and the dog.' The poor cur is not too well drawn, the landscape is stiff and formal; but in this case the faults, if faults they be, of execution rather add to than diminish the effect of the picture: it has a strange, wild, dreary, broken-hearted look; we fancy we see the landscape as it must have appeared to Sikes, when ghastly and with bloodshot eyes he looked at it." The etching of _Jonathan Wild Discovering Darrell in the Loft_ ["Jack Sheppard"]

reminds one, in its treatment, of Rembrandt, for the work of Cruikshank, be it observed, distinctly shows in its results that he studied both Hogarth and Rembrandt. The effect the artist has produced is wonderful; the ray of light thrown through the gloom upon the figure of Darrell as he stands against the wall, sword in hand, is capitally managed, "while the intricacies of the tile-work, and the mysterious twinkling of light among the beams are excellently felt and rendered."[87] _Simon Renard and Winwike on the Roof of the White Tower_ ["Tower of London"] is another admirable drawing. The scene is laid on the platform of one of the antique guns which frown from the embrasures of the river face of the fortress. The head of Renard is not well drawn. The character of the amba.s.sador gives one the idea of a Spanish Iago, a clever, calculating knave, whom we should credit with the possession of a broad and lofty forehead, indicative of deep and concentrated thought; in the etching, however, before us, he has none at all, a deficiency compensated by puffy cheeks and a preposterous beak. These imperfections, which in another artist would mar the drawing, serve only to throw its excellencies into prominent notice. The lights and shadows are most effectively rendered, and the setting sun throws a broad light upon the features of the warder, who has laid aside his arquebus while conversing with the wily Spaniard. Of the many who have noticed the well-known etching of _Born a Genius and Born a Dwarf_ ["Comic Almanack, 1847"], not one (so far at least as we know) has ever mentioned its origin. The subject was prompted by one of the last entries in the diary of poor Benjamin Robert Haydon, who died by his own hand on the 22nd of June, 1846, his corpse being found at the foot of his colossal picture of _Alfred the Great and the First British Jury_. The entry runs as follows:--"Tom Thumb had 12,000 people last week, B. R. Haydon 133-1/2 (the 1/2 a little girl). Exquisite taste of the English people!" In the etching which shows us _Randulph and Hilda Dancing in the Rotunda at Ranelagh_ ["Miser's Daughter"], he brings us face to face with our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers; wherever he got his authority from, the huge circular hall with galleries and arches running round it, illuminated by a thousand lamps, and the curious orchestra with the old-fas.h.i.+oned sounding-board above, are no freak of the artist's imagination. The etching possesses a wondrous charm of reality. We find ourselves a.s.sisting, as it were, at one of the masquerades described in "Sir Charles Grandison"; many of the company are in fancy dresses, and we find it difficult to realize, in these broad-cloth days, that the gentlemen in the velvet coats, with gold-bound embroidered waistcoats, silk stockings, silver gilt rapiers, and laced hats, dancing minuets with Chinamen, harlequins, scaramouches, templars, and other fancifully-dressed persons, are simply wearing the every-day costume of men of fas.h.i.+on of the day.

MANNERISM.

Perhaps more than any other comic artist of past or present time, George is distinguished by his mannerisms. His horses, his women, the costumes of his male and female characters, the cut of their garments and of their boots, the arrangement of their hair, will proclaim his individuality anywhere; and yet, if you look at any of the designs which he executed in his best and brightest days, before he took up with the mania which contributed, as we shall presently see, so largely to the ruin of his artistic genius, fame, and fortunes, we cannot fail to be impressed with the quaintness of his imagination. In this quaintness and originality lie the charm and freshness which is the peculiar characteristic of his designs. Unlike those of other artists, you may turn over volume after volume of his sketches, and be conscious of no sense of weariness. Much of this no doubt is due to their constant variety. Unlike the generality of modern ill.u.s.trators, he is not limited to the costumes and incidents of the every-day commonplace life of the nineteenth century; he does not confine himself to humour; his fancy takes a wider range, and revels in subjects of wonder, diablery, and romance. Gnomes and fairies, devils and goblins, knights, giants, jesters, and morris dancers are continually pa.s.sing before us; there is an endless succession of novelties, treated with a quaintness of fancy which distinguishes it above all others; there is a ceaseless variety in his _dramatis personae_, while the characters are as various as the subjects. In these characteristics seem to lie the secret of the pleasure which his ill.u.s.trations, whether they be drawn on wood or etched on the copper, never fail to inspire.

The sale and purchase of Peter Schlemihl's _Shadow_ has been noticed by Thackeray. We see the Old Gentleman neatly packing up his purchase after the manner of an "old clo'" dealer; he has just "lifted the _shadow of one leg_; he is going to fold it back neatly, as one does the tails of a coat, and will stow it, without any creases or crumples, along with the other black garments that lie in that immense pocket of his."[88]

Another ill.u.s.tration in the same book shows us Peter, after he has repented of his bargain (as vendors invariably do who indulge in mercantile transactions of this character) in ardent pursuit of his shadow, which the tantilizing purchaser has let out for the occasion.

Can anything more ludicrous be imagined than this scampering piece of intangibility? The etching of _Sailors Carousing_ ["Greenwich Hospital"], executed in 1826, before the artist had altogether discontinued the style and manner of Gillray, would have delighted the heart of that accomplished caricaturist. An old one-eyed salt presides over a vast bowl of punch, the contents of which he is engaged in distributing to the company. One enthusiastic tar foots it with such vigour that he cannons against a potman, upsetting him and the measure of scalding liquor he carries over another angry, blaspheming sailor man; another sea worthy, snoring drunk, has converted his quart pot into an impromptu pillow, his own rec.u.mbent form serving the purposes of a footstool to a companion. The females are a combination of the styles of Gillray and Cruikshank, and, with one exception, are old, ugly, and preposterously fat. A comical ill.u.s.tration in the same book is called, _Paying off a Jew Pedlar_. The unhappy man (who had cheated the sailors), innocent of danger, is seated on a grating with his combs, spy-gla.s.ses, necklaces, ribbons, and all the rest of his "Brummagem"

trumpery, spread out before him. The men, who have slily hitched a rope to the grating, suddenly give it a hoist, and away slides Moses, with all his wares and trumpery, into the hold together! How poor Seymour would have revelled in that admirable tailpiece in "Three Courses and a Dessert," where an unhappy wight, pursued by a bull, manages to scramble atop of a gate-post (the only part free from spikes), to find his escape cut off on one side by a couple of bull-dogs, and on the other by a _chevaux-de-frise_ terminating in a horse pond! We meet with a solemn piece of fun in _Simpkin Dancing to the Musicians_, one of the ill.u.s.trations to the celebrated "New Bath Guide" of Christopher Anstey--

"And I thought it was right, as the music was come, To foot it a little in Tabitha's room."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE WITCH'S SWITCH."

"ABSENT-MINDEDNESS."

"THE TeTE-a-TeTE."

"THE DENTIST."

"BAT BOROO."

SKETCHES FROM GEORGE CRUIKSHANK'S "THREE COURSES AND A DESSERT."

_Face p. 175._]

_The Last Cab Driver_ ["Sketches by Boz"] deserves a pa.s.sing notice, because it has preserved from oblivion a cla.s.s of vehicles which has long since disappeared from the London streets. It looked for all the world like the section of a coffin set on end, the seat (which was intended to accommodate only one person besides the driver) occupying the centre. The cabman being a very _mauvais sujet_, we find the surroundings (after the artist's practice) in strict keeping with his character. The building past which he drives is marked "Old Bailey"; whilst a snuff manufacturer in the street at the back advertises himself as the vendor of "Real Irish Blackguard."

WAVERLEY NOVELS.

The dry, quaint humour of the author of "Waverley" exactly suited the quaint imaginings of our artist. Both Scott and Cruikshank delighted in the supernatural and the marvellous, and this is why some of the most characteristic of the artist's designs are to be found in his ill.u.s.trations to the "Waverley Novels." In one of these he shows us the ill.u.s.trious Dominie at the moment, when reaching over to gather a water-lily, he falls souse into the Slough of Lochend, in which he forthwith became bogged up to the middle, his plight drawing from him of course his favourite e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of amazement. By the a.s.sistance of some women the luckless Dominie was extracted from his position, justifying the remark of one of his a.s.sistants, that "the laird might as weel trust the care of his bairn to a potato-bogle." Which was the most helpless of the two men--the Laird of Dumbiedikes, or the ill.u.s.trious Dominie--it would be difficult to say; both these most original characters took a powerful hold on the artist's imagination, and as a natural consequence the ideas of Scott were completely realized. A very comical design is that in which he shows us the worthy but witless laird with his laced c.o.c.ked hat and empty tobacco pipe,[89] and his hand extended "like the claw of a heraldic griffin," when he managed to utter something beyond his usual morning greeting, and frightened Jeannie into the belief that he had so far "screwed his courage to the sticking place" as to venture on a matrimonial proposal, to which unwonted effort of imagination his intelligence, however, proved altogether unequal.

ALLITERATIVE DESIGNS.

In the "Comic Almanack" will be found many examples of George's tendency to graphic alliteration. _The Fall of the Leaf_ affords a capital specimen of the kind of design to which we allude. The leaf of the dinner-table has been so insecurely fastened that it falls, burying with it the mistress of the house, the fish, the champagne, a sherry decanter, a vase of flowers,--everything, in fact, to which it formed a treacherous and unreliable support; Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" lies in a corner of the room, and the walls are hung with appropriate subjects, such as the Fall of Foyers, the Falls of Niagara, Falls of the Clyde, and so on. An ill.u.s.tration of a similar kind will be found in _Taurus--a Literary Bull_. The animal has rushed into a printing office and scattered the compositors right and left; some seek shelter beneath their frames, one clambers wildly up the shelves of a paper case, while others scuttle over the frames, and one man, too wholly dismayed and bewildered to run, brandishes a stool in helpless imbecility. The bull is perhaps the most astonished of the _dramatis personae_, and evidently wonders into what manner of place fate has brought him. The walls are pasted with appropriate advertis.e.m.e.nts: "Some Account of the Pope's Bull," "A c.o.c.k and Bull Story," "Theatre Royal, Haymarket--John Bull"

"To be Sold by Auction, the Bull Inn," "Abstract of the Act against Bull-baiting," and so on. In _Libra Striking the Balance_ (same year), a dishonest tradesman has been detected in using false weights and measures. The beadle holds up a pair of scales, one of which weighs very much heavier than the other. The wretched culprit, conscious, all too late, that honesty would have proved "the best policy" for himself, leans against his shelves the picture of sullen and detected guilt. The window of the shop bears on it the painted _legend_ of "The cheapest shop in London." Leaning against the counter we find a programme of the "City Theatre," announcing the performance of "Measure for Measure": to conclude with "Honest Thieves"; an officer outside (surrounded by a deeply interested crowd) is engaged in breaking up a second pair of dishonest scales. Chronology, difference in politics, character, tastes, and disposition, are most amusingly set at defiance in the etching ent.i.tled _The Revolution at Madame Tussaud's_ [1847]: Mary Queen of Scots "treads a measure" with William Penn the Quaker; Fox and Pitt make long noses at each other from opposite sides of the room; O'Connell shakes hands with Freschi, to whom our old friend the elderly country gentleman offers a friendly pinch of snuff; William Shakespeare flirts with an almond-eyed Chinese woman; Henry the Eighth smokes a long churchwarden with Judge Jefferys; Lord Byron (with greater propriety) exchanges friendly greetings with Jean Jacques Rousseau; whilst the great Napoleon unbends, as chroniclers a.s.sert that he was wont to do, and waltzes round the room with Madame Tussaud, and Britannia (to the uproarious delight of Sir William Wallace) rasps her trident across her s.h.i.+eld, by way of accompaniment to the fiddle of the Saturnine Paganini.

The fun of these side splitting designs is only equalled by their variety. The "Almanack" of 1838 introduces us to the inevitable row which forms the wind-up of a Hibernian _festa_; chairs, sticks, shovels,--anything that comes to hand is used without fear or favour; men, women, children struggle together in inextricable confusion amidst the _debris_ of wrecked furniture, broken gla.s.s, and battered pewter; high above the din drone the nasal tones of the piper; while amidst the infernal clatter "the praist" vainly endeavours to re-establish order and make himself heard. _Theatrical Fun Dinner_ (1841) represents the close of the banquet. Hamlet is already too far gone to know what he is doing; Oth.e.l.lo belabours Iago with a bottle; Shylock and Antonio fraternize; whilst a reconciliation is established between Macbeth and Macduff, who c.h.i.n.k gla.s.ses by way of cementing their friends.h.i.+p; Sir John Falstaff lights his pipe at Bardolph's nose; whilst Romeo hands up a gla.s.s of something short and strong to his Juliet in the balcony. 1842 gives us the celebrated etching of "_Gone!_" an auctioneer "knocking down" a bust of Socrates; at the word "_gone_" the flooring gives way, and auctioneer, buyers, and Socrates, with all their surroundings, descend with a simultaneous crash into the cellars below. Drowning men catch at straws, and the spectacled visage of the auctioneer, as he clings wildly to his rostrum, is a perfect study of terrified imbecility.

In looking at these quaint designs, the mind of any one possessed of any imagination at all cannot fail to be impressed with a sense of the original train of thought which must have characterized the man who could conceive and realize them. How appropriately and admirably, even in trivial matters, the details of the design are worked out! If the reader will refer to the etching in "St. James'," where the sergeant places the boot of his master, the Duke of Marlborough, on a map of Flanders, he will at once see what we mean. The action is accidental; and yet where could the boot have been placed with greater propriety?

for surely if any country was under the heel of the great English captain, it was Flanders. Nothing to equal these designs are ever seen in these days, perhaps nothing like them will ever be seen again. There are many excellent comic designs produced by our artists of to-day; but with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Caldicott and Colonel Seccombe, they lack _character_. You pa.s.s them by, and straightway forget them. Not so with these admirable little designs; you turn to them again and again, and each time with a refres.h.i.+ng sense of pleasure. Herein seems to lie the power of true genius--that its productions give not only a sense of freshness and delight, but that the sensation so conveyed will not die.

There are people, I believe, on whom they produce no such impression; such people, as regards comic art, are for all practical purposes "dry bones," and to dry bones such as these the pencil of "honest George"

will appeal in vain.

Some writers on the subject of Cruikshank and his work would have us believe that he developed his highest powers of imagination and fancy, and achieved his highest reputation, when depicting subjects of a fairy or supernatural order. Whether these scribes be right or whether they be wrong, there is no doubt that he discovered for himself an enchanted land of mountain and streamlet, of meadow and waterfall, of gnomes and fairies, of demons, witches, and of giants. The process by which he attained his excellence as an ill.u.s.trator of fairy lore and legend has been related by himself in his own simple, unpolished words in the (so-called) "Fairy Library." Unquestionably the opportunity which these subjects afforded of exercising untrammelled his marvellous gifts of imagination and fancy, and of realizing objects which owe their being to the creative faculties of his mind, were eagerly embraced by the artist; but, although the results were singularly weird and often very beautiful, I find myself obliged to differ from those who would have us believe that in realizing subjects of this kind he attained his highest excellence. The charm of George Cruikshank's talent lies in the fact that notwithstanding his defects in drawing, _everything_ he took in hand is impressed with the stamp of a strong and original genius; it is like nothing we have seen before; every one of his designs is marked with distinctive features of beauty, quaintness, or originality peculiar to himself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE ELVES AND THE COBBLER."

"THE WAITS OF BREMEN AND THE ROBBERS."

FROM GEORGE CRUIKSHANK'S EDITION OF "GERMAN POPULAR STORIES."

_Face p. 180._]

The "German Popular Stories" probably contain the most striking specimens of Cruikshank's power as a designer of _fairy_ subjects. In reference to these ill.u.s.trations, our great critic, Mr. Ruskin, says: "They are of quite sterling and admirable art, in a cla.s.s precisely parallel in elevation to the character of the tales which they ill.u.s.trate; and the original etchings, as I have before said in the Appendix to my 'Elements of Drawing,' were unrivalled in masterfulness of touch since Rembrandt, in some qualities of delineation unrivalled even by him." "_The Two Elves_,"

says Hamerton, "especially the nearer one, who is putting on his breeches, are drawn with a point at once so precise and vivacious, so full of keen fun and inimitably happy invention, that I have not found their equal in comic etching anywhere ... the picturesque details of the room are etched with the same felicitous intelligence; but the marvel of the work is in the expression of the strange little faces, and the energy of the comical wee limbs."[90] In _The Witches' Frolic_ ["Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft"], we find a happy blending of the terrible and the grotesque.

Look at the old hags floating out to sea in their tubs; and the strange, uncanny thing with dreadful eyes bobbing up and down midway between the foremost old woman and the distant vessel. The _thing_ may be a s.h.i.+p, it may be a fish, or it may be a fiend,--in the dim half light we cannot tell what,--but it is horribly suggestive of nightmare, and makes one laugh as well as shudder. Some ghostly goblins, the creations of George's weird fancy, will be found in "The Omnibus"; we see them following a ghostly s.h.i.+p manned by ghostly mariners, and we find in the same book ghostly Dutchmen playing a game of diabolical leap-frog with Australian kangaroos.